Capturing People

June 12, 2006
Adrian Hilton | University of Surrey

Capture and representation of a persons appearance during movement in a form that can be manipulated for highly realistic computer animation in games and film is an open research problem. This talk will present a number of approaches that have been introduced to capture people from multiple view video using both model-based and model-free computer vision methodologies. Surface Motion Capture (SurfCap) will be introduced which allows representation and animation control of people with the captured dynamics of clothing during movement. SurfCap will be presented as an analogous technology to skeletal human motion capture using markers (MoCap) which has become a standard production tool. Surface motion graphs are used to animate people from multiple captured surface sequences allowing control of movement and action. Surface matching methods based on geometry image sequences using spherical parameterisation are used to transition between captured motion sequences and reconstruct skeletal movement. SurfCap’s potential as a future technology for production in games and film will be discussed.

Speaker Details

Adrian Hilton is Professor of Computer Vision & Graphics at the University of Surrey, UK and heads the Visual Media Research Group. The goal of his research over the past decade has been to bridge-the-gap between the real world and computer generated imagery. His early work focused on the analysis of 3D surface measurement data resulting in a hand-held scanner for object modelling used commercially in both animation production and automotive design. Subsequent research has focused on reconstruction and representation of dynamic scenes from video using model-based computer vision. Resulting technologies include automatic capture of animated models of people for computer games and a 3D video system for face capture and visual speech synthesis. He has published extensively in both vision and graphics, and received a number of awards for innovation. He is on the editorial board of Computer Vision and Image Understanding and a founding organiser of the European Conference on Visual Media Production. His research interests remain capturing reality for interactive content in entertainment and communication.http://www.ee.surrey.ac.uk/Personal/A.Hilton